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Chicken Cream

A creamy chicken dish made by pounding a hen breast with cream, seasoning, sieving, and steaming, garnished with tongue or ham and truffles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and truffle work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 516 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Chicken Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chicken mixture

  1. Pound the breast of the hen in a marble mortar, adding ½ pint of double cream while pounding.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Work in another ½ pint of cream.

Steam and serve

  1. Garnish a plain mold with tongue or ham and truffles.

  2. Pour in the mixture and steam very slowly for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with truffle or mushroom sauce, or a clear brown sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Ham + truffletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together516 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Cream + hamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Cream + truffletop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Pepper + hamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hen breast
Pounded to a fine paste, it forms the body and structure of the creamed mixture.
Double cream
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the set mixture soft and smooth rather than dry.

The step that matters

Steam very slowly for 1 hour. Gentle, low heat lets the mixture set evenly into a smooth, tender custard-like texture. Rapid boiling would make it curdle, toughen, or develop holes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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